Schlesinger Library

Boston Women’s Health Book Collective Records

The Boston Women’s Health Book Collective is renowned for its grassroots global effort to advance the health and rights of women and girls.

In 1969, a small group of women in Boston, frustrated by a lack of useful medical information, began to educate themselves and others about their bodies. The fruit of this endeavor, which took shape in an ongoing process of discovering and sharing knowledge collectively, was a pathbreaking book. Our Bodies, Ourselves. Itwas hailed as the “bible of women’s health” and has since been translated and adapted into more than 25 languages.

Records in our collections describe the making of Our Bodies, Ourselves and the later publications produced by the collective: Ourselves and Our Children (1978), Changing Bodies, Changing Lives, A Book for Teens on Sex and Relationships (1980), and Ourselves, Growing Older, Women Aging with Knowledge and Power (1987 and 1994), among others. Records also trace the collective’s efforts to mobilize its international contacts to facilitate translation/adaptation projects, as well as the establishment in 2001 of the Our Bodies Ourselves Global Initiative.

From the Collection:

RENOVATION UPDATE:

The Schlesinger Library building is closed for renovation from November 2018 through early September 2019. During this time, researchers can access the Library’s collections, by appointment, via a temporary Reading Room in Fay House, Radcliffe Yard.

Since all Library collections are now stored off-site and seating in the temporary reading room is limited, advance notice of at least 3–4 business days is required. Appointments can be made via our Ask a Librarian form.

In 1974, People magazine called Florynce (Flo) Kennedy “the biggest, loudest and, indisputably, the rudest mouth on the battleground where feminist activists and radical politics join in mostly common cause.” Lawyer, civil rights and women’s rights advocate, and gadfly, Kennedy was delighted with the accolade.

Delta Sigma Theta’s emphasis and motivation comes from being a “sorority that had its origin among Negro women confronted as they were with what Mary Church Terrell described as the double handicap of race and sex.”

Related Exhibition

Altered Gazes foregrounds women as creators and consumers of countercultural content. In addition to materials from our growing collection of comics, zines, erotica and pornography, and other alternative publications, the exhibition features materials from the Ludlow Santo Domingo Collection, one of the largest gatherings of underground, alternative, and pop-culture publications in the world